


Baseline

by Brutal_Harrier



Category: Blade Runner (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, Dreams, Gen, Heavy Angst, i'm just editing and importing them, playing fast and loose with "canon", there are rape mentions in chapter 10, these are all up on my tumblr
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-16
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2019-02-03 09:03:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 10
Words: 1,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12745209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brutal_Harrier/pseuds/Brutal_Harrier
Summary: base·lineˈbāsˌlīnnouna minimum or starting point used for comparisons.





	1. Do you have a heart? Within.

_ You’ve gotten along fine without one….. _

 

The words echo in his head, over, and over, and over. Like church bells in an abandoned cathedral, with cracked windows, empty pews, and silence where prayers once echoed.

 

With one sentence she tore into his very being and carved into his flesh like a butcher with a lamb. With a few thoughtless syllables she rends his world apart and he says “Thank you.” Like it doesn’t matter, like  **he** doesn’t matter because she’s right.

 

Because he’s a replicant and a bladerunner at that. The only replicant bladerunners are KD6-3s, because they’re ‘special’. To do the work they’re made for KD6-3s have to be able to make their own decisions. But that amount of self sufficiency is dangerous in a replicant, Wallace wasn’t going to make the same mistakes as his predecessor. So in exchange for their ‘free thinking’ KD6-3s have a number of fail safes. Obedience, low self preservation, and restricted emotional response. KD6-3s exhibited less emotion than most replicants and they stay at baseline near constantly.

 

They don’t have  **souls** , and they don’t have  **hearts** either.

 

**He** has nothing.

 

Within.


	2. What's it like to play with your dog? Interlinked.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I was gonna edit all of these but i don't feel like it so instead i'll post a few in rapid succession.

He knows what animals are, he’s even seen a few. Protein worms are, almost an animal and every once in awhile one of the hollow adds will have an animal in it. He knows what it is but this one, this dog is different.

 

His name is Max and he drinks whisky off the floor and almost never barks but K just can’t quite tell if he’s real. Real or not Maz is an old dog and he meanders about in that particular way that old dogs do and gets in your war just enough to get your attention without being a nuisance. 

 

On some level K knows he has more important things to do but instead he’s playing with a dog. Somewhere in his implanted memories he recalls the idea of fetch and it’s as good a game as any he’s ever played. It’s maybe even the only game he’s ever played, so he throws the stick again and max trots slowly after it.

 

What’s it like to play with your dog?

Interlinked.

 


	3. Has anyone ever locked you out of a room? Within.

Sometimes he dreams, most of the time when he dreams it’s the same dream. In this dream he’s standing in a stark white hallway in front of a door. There’s no one else around and he knows that if he walks away from the door he might not ever find it again. The door is locked and he doesn’t have anything that might help him open it. He knows he’s never been on the other side of the door and that even if the door was open he wouldn't be allowed inside.

 

But he can get close as long as he doesn’t go inside the room, so he presses his ear to the door and hears something that sounds like a heartbeat. The door is warm against the side of his face and the gently thrumming noise is comforting. He usually sits there pressed against the door until he wakes up. When he wakes up from the dream he thinks of three numbers 6, 10, and 21 and he reminds himself that they don’t mean anything.

 

Has Anyone ever locked you out of a room?

 

Within.


	4. What comes from something else? Stem.

Replicants aren’t born they’re made. In factories and in labs, put together piece by piece then packaged and sold. People tell themselves it’s fine because replicants aren’t human, replicants don’t have souls.

 

That means K doesn’t have a soul, or a family. He tells himself it doesn’t matter and usually he believes it too. It makes sense nothings this empty could have been born. It doesn’t matter where fake boys come from.

 

What come from something else? 

 

Stem.


	5. Have they let you feel heartbreak? Interlinked.

There’s a gap in his memory from the day before he got JOI to the day after. He’s not quite sure where he got her. Of course he knows she’s a wallace corp product, just like he is but he feels like he should remember more than that, but he doesn’t.

 

One day she wasn’t there and the next she was, that’s all he can remember. He’s tried to figure out what he can’t remember but he always ends up feeling dizzy and fatigued so he stopped trying. JOI acts like she loves him, maybe she even feels like she loves him. But K never feels like it’s real, he wishes it was and he wishes he didn’t want it to be. But he knows it isn’t because she’s just like him, sometimes he almost feels  _ happy _ about that and it makes him sick. She’s like a doll performing love for some  **thing** that can’t even appreciate it.

 

So when she tells him he makes her happy he says she doesn’t have to.He wants to tell her not to, but that would just be taking another choice away from her.

 

Have they let you feel heartbreak?

 

Interlinked.


	6. Do you have a particular personality? Distinct.

_ You don’t even smile do you….. _

 

K hadn’t had a response for that, she wasn't wrong. He couldn't even remember a time he'd smiled because he wanted to and not because someone expected him to. Smiling doesn't come naturally to him, and no one expects a bladerunner to be especially 'peppy' so he never really tried to be happy. But hearing it from her, another replicant who he'd never even really spoken to before. It hurt.

 

The officer in charge of administering his baseline test had taken to calling him "Constant K" to date it was probably the  friendliest nickname anyone in the LAPD had ever given him. The other officers didn't like to talk to him and Joshi got tense whenever he asked questions he didn't need to. So there wasn't really anyway he could find out if he was similar to the LAPDs previous replicant bladerunners. A part of him was scared to find out.

 

The madame says he’s efficient, more efficient than some of the other replicants she’s worked with. But the overwhelming scent of alcohol on her breath makes the praise taster sour. That and even if she’d really meant it efficiency isn’t a personality either.

 

Do you have a particular personality?

 

Distinct.


	7. Do you prefer the day or the night? Against the dark.

It never gets dark in the city, even in the dead of night with the moon completely blocked out by clouds of pollution it’s always painfully bright. No matter what time you go out there’s always the holograms and cars, people coming and going millions and billions of different things all desperately vying for attention.

 

K always shuffles into his apartment as quickly as possible, shoulders hunched and head down. Carefully ducking away from the frenzied whirlwind of excitement. The atmosphere changes when he shuts his door to the outside world and for a moment he can convince himself it’s peaceful but the stillness feels endlessly wrong.

 

Do you prefer the day or the night?

 

Against the dark.


	8. When you're not performing your duties do they keep you in a little box? Cells.

HIs apartment was issued to him just like, his badge, and his gun, and his life. The furniture was picked out, the walls have never been painted and besides JOI he hasn’t put anything besides a few books in it since he first moved in.

 

The whole thing feels staged, on the surface it looks just like anyone else’s apartment. But it doesn’t have the sense of life that a real home does. No amassing clutter from everyday living, no unfinished projects that you swear you’ll get back to, or books that’ve only been half read. His apartment is just going through the motions of being a home. Like an oversized doll house.

 

When you’re not performing your duties do they keep you in a little box?

 

Cells.


	9. Do they teach you how to feel finger to finger? Interlinked.

Most of Ks memories, his  _ real _ memories involve doing his duties for the LAPD or watching other LAPD officers. The other officers had friends, sometimes he’d see them leaving together and talking about what they liked to do outside of work. The other officers rarely spoke to him and when they did it was either insults or orders. 

 

He doesn’t have any friends, he didn’t have many in his implanted memories either. He’s been alone his whole life. That will never change.

 

Do they teach you how to feel finger to finger?

 

Interlinked.


	10. What's it like when you have an orgasm. Fountain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the chapter with the non-graphic rape mentions.

There’s something K’s doesn’t let himself remember, something that happened to him before he worked under Lieutenant Joshi. Before he worked under Joshi  there was someone else, someone who seemed friendly, someone who said they liked him. 

 

His old Lieutenant was always giving him extra attention, and they seemed bothered whenever he’d come back injured from a job. Once they said that, “pretty ones like you shouldn’t be getting hurt.” The words bothered K but he didn’t say anything, he wasn’t supposed to say anything. So he never did.

 

The Lieutenant never said the strange things in front of the other officers, but there was one day after a general meeting when they called out to him. “KD6, don’t go too far.” That’s what they said, so he didn’t. Then after everyone else had left they called him back into the meeting room.

 

Not too long after this that Lieutenant transferred to a new department, no one ever found out and K tried to forget.

 

What’s it like when you have an orgasm.

Fountain.


End file.
